Taeyeon returned home from her first day of school with a surprisingly upbeat outlook on the day as a whole. She unlocked the door to her aunt’s two-bedroom apartment, stepping into the unsettlingly tiny space and slipping her shoes off. The wood-floored living space was surprisingly quiet; her aunt and mother were still at work.

    Secretly, Taeyeon enjoyed these few hours of solitude very much. Even back in Korea, when she lived in a pseudo-mansion, when her toy poodle, Zero, would run up to her with his sharp, excited barks, (when her parents were still together), she liked to spend the majority of her post-school time alone. It was a way to kind of “recharge” from the draining mental effort of interacting with her schoolmates. She’d sit alone at her desk, reading whatever book she’d chosen for that week, or doing homework while her favorite music played in the background. And that’s exactly what she did after coming home from her first day of school in America.

    Things were a bit different, but it was the same gist. She prepared a sandwich for herself and retreated to the room she shared with her mother, sitting at the compact wooden desk beside her bed and flipping her laptop open in order to play some music. As she ate, she hummed and swayed along to the beats with an uncharacteristic bubbliness about her. It was perplexing, but welcome. For the past few days, her emotional state had been wracked with turmoil. Her entire life had been uprooted, thrown from the place she’d known her entire life and into a what might has well have been a different world. She’d known about her parents’ divorce for a long time now, but that didn’t make the sting of knowing that two people she loved so dearly no longer loved one another any more. And on top of that, there was the choice of staying with her father or her mother. Her brother and sister had chosen their father, so to Taeyeon, it was only right that she stay with their mother; the older women would need someone by her side to support her through these hard times. Not that it was an easy decision in the slightest - Taeyeon had found herself crying every night for a week straight in response to the mere prospect of choosing - but she knew that despite how hard of a time she herself was having, her mother must have had it twenty times worse. And so, she’d decided to move.

    And now here she was, at a school with no friends, a foreigner in a foreign land, too scared to speak to even her teachers, fearing judgement for her thick accent. She had cried this morning before going to school (privately of course, so as not to upset her mother), she had cried in the bathroom before lunch, and she likely would have cried again before the end of the day had it not been for one thing.

She’d been approached by an unbelievably kind girl named Stephanie (though she liked to be called Tiffany) Hwang. She was tall for a girl, with curled black hair and a toothy grin that always reached her eyes. Upon her approach, she’d had the air of extreme confidence about her. It exuded from her in the way she spoke and held herself; her body language and tonality were charming, and in a way, intimidating. Taeyeon had originally been afraid that the girl was going to admonish her for accidentally performing some kind of American cultural taboo. This wasn’t the case, thankfully. Instead, she’d become Taeyeon’s first American friend, assuaging her insecurities and making her feel welcome for the first time since she’d arrived in the country. She’d even invited Taeyeon to sit beside her in class the next day. It was almost surreal.

As Taeyeon munched away at her food, she wondered if Tiffany knew just how much that little interaction meant to her, how much her day had been brightened by it. The blonde found her cheeks warming and her forehead breaking into a sweat at the prospect of Tiffany finding out how much Taeyeon already liked her. It was downright weird. For all she knew, Tiffany could be a serial killer who befriended her victims before slitting their throats and burying their bodies in her basement. Something told her this wasn’t the case, but the principle of it still stood. She knew next to nothing about this girl, yet she couldn’t get Tiffany Hwang’s smiling face out of her head. It was almost concerning.

Taeyeon was eventually able to rationalize her feelings by chalking them up to the emotionally vulnerable state she was currently in; had anyone walked up to her and treated her half as nice as Tiffany had, she would have been equally content. Some odd inkling told her this wasn’t true, but she brushed it off. There was no other logical explanation. This rationalization was enough to allow her to focus on the Biology homework she’d been assigned.

Hours later, the opening and closing of the front door signalled the arrival of Taeyeon’s aunt and mother. The blonde stood from her desk and stretched, shutting her book and letting out a mewling yawn as she made her way into the living room. Her head was still swimming with information, and as a result, it took her a moment to differentiate the two taller women standing before the front door.

Her mother and aunt were uncannily similar in appearance. If Taeyeon hadn’t known they were two years apart, she would have assumed they were twins. Both were svelte and lanky, with high cheekbones and tired eyes. Although it was clear that Taeyeon had gotten her height from her father’s side of the family, one could easily see that many of the young blonde’s facial features (namely her nose and lips) came directly from her mother.

“Hi mom, hi auntie,” Taeyeon spoke in Korean as she went to hug her family members, “How was work today?”

“Tiring,” Taeyeon’s mother replied, sighing as she plopped herself down on the couch, “American accounting systems are certainly… different from those in Korea.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Taeyeon’s aunt asked in mock indignation, striding into the kitchen and getting started on dinner as if she hadn’t just worked a full eight-hour work day, “They’re much more efficient.”

“I don’t know if that’s the word for it…” Taeyeon’s mother grumbled, audible only to her daughter, who had taken a seat beside her, “How was your day, Taeyeon? How were your classes? Did you make a lot of friends?”

“The classes were actually pretty easy. None of the material looks too complicated. Maybe calculus, but even then, it’s just a lot of studying, nothing too complex. As for friends, not really… I didn’t really talk to anyone,” Taeyeon said uncertainly, her heart dropping as she saw the sorrowful, pitying look that came upon her mother’s face, “Until lunch, that is. This girl named Tiffany came up to me and talked to me. She knew I was new and I asked me to sit with her in class tomorrow. I think she’s a cheerleader. She seems really nice!”

Taeyeon’s mother’s smile of relief was all the answer the blonde needed.

“Be careful with those preppy girls!” Taeyeon’s aunt called from the kitchen